Before Beasts, There Was Lightning
by LoweFantasy
Summary: Their pirated ship sunk, land finally found, Kai and his transformed team find themselves out of the pan and into the fire when they're captured by the U.S. Army, who have commandeered Max's Mom's research about their bizarre combination with their bitbeasts and intend to finish it themselves, with little thought to the humanity of their subjects. Summary of previous books inside.
1. Previously

_What happened in previous books..._

Kai has kept it a secret from his team that what the Abbey had really been training him into wasn't just to become a beyblading pawn to his grandfather, but as a ninja-like, beyblade armed assassin. Kai has killed before, but intends to keep his skill and past buried and forgotten-until an unknown beyblader and a mysterious girl sing out, not only Tyson and Max's bitbeasts, but their souls as well. The singing girl, named Ayah, turns out to be just as much a prisoner as Tyson and Max's souls and nearly dies when she tries to avoid stealing Ray's soul as well. Not knowing she has survived, her captors leave Ayah alone long enough to give Kai a map to Tyson and Max's souls, to which he uses his bad-a beyblade assassin's skills to break in, slice the Achilles tendons of guards, avoid armed men, and escape with the souls and bitbeasts of his team mates.

In the second book, Kai has hopes that his incursion has been unnoticed, but he is soon distracted by his teammates adoption of the abandoned, injured Ayah, who is as beautiful as she is mysterious. Kai is not so quick to forget her inhuman abilities to control sound and sing out human souls. It doesn't help that he finds he isn't as immune as he'd like to be to her beauty and kindness, which he attributes to her inhuman qualities. When Tyson throws a homemade tournament for his birthday, Kai pays little attention to it, until Ayah leads him to a dark flight of stairs where another assassin, trained in the Abbey just as Kai was, is closing in for their kill. At the last minute Kai smashes their sharp assassin beyblades with Dranzer, but in the fight something strange happens and Kai is overwhelmed by Dranzer's explosion of flame. Ayah insists she just heard something with her strange, ultra sharp hearing, but as the flames die down and Kai finds himself once more in her arms, he finds himself trusting her less than ever. Nothing will harm his teammates, even if they happen to be gorgeous, gentle, and soft.

Come the opening of the third book, Kai is in the hospital suffering from severe burns. He demands to know what his ex-fellow Abbey assassins had to do with Ayah, and she doesn't know, but she is determined to stop them from harming the BladeBreakers. She offers to heal Kai, and in the process, lures him into a three day slumber. When he wakes up, not only is Ayah gone, his burns have completely healed, the president of the United States has been assassinated, and another assassin is waiting for him.

Kai is kidnapped and taken to a secret, underground bunker held by none other than a winged man who claims to be of the same species as Ayah, and who intends to use the abandoned Abbey assassins to clear the world of humankind so his own can flourish. Ayah is to be his Eve. But Kai, not keen on being anyone's captive, smashes his way to Ayah with the help of the also captive Tala. What Ayah and this...black angel are is made clear and Kai must defeat Cain, who so easily cowed the once fearless Abbey assassin's with his ability to kill if anyone on Earth is to survive. With the help of the Bladebreakers (who appear out of the blue because they're obsessive-compulsive friends like that and aren't likely to leave one of their own in trouble), along with the boosting ability of Ayah's voice, Kai burns Cain to death, but at the cost of burning himself as well.

In the fourth book, Kai comes to in the opposite state he blacked out in-freezing to death, and on a boat heading back for the mainland. Before his companions can celebrate, Max suddenly dives overboard and vanishes into the ocean. The others rush to the hospital, and Kai, always the lone wolf and only wanting to be warm, dodges going and head back to the dojo, where he, in a fit of desperation on finding water makes it worse, starts a fire and dives into it. He wakes up a scarlet, winged denizen of fire, to the surprise and delight of Tyson and Ray, who thought him and Max dead. Ayah also goes through drastic transformations. Since Kai can't find Dranzer, he figures they have become one, and tries to dissuade an excited Tyson that turning into a flying, inhuman freak isn't as cool as it sounds. Kai, and possibly the still missing Max, will never lead normal lives. Cain and the assassination of Ayah's family are already testaments that there is no room in the world for the kind of beings they have become.

Of course Kai has no time or patience to deal with his newly discovered feelings for Ayah. He already knows a man raised from a boy for cruelty and killing could never have the tenderness to make a woman happy, let alone a family. So what more is there to say?

In the fifth book, Kai has spent the last month furiously trying to regain his lost physic and strength that his unplanned transformation took from him. On returning to Tyson's, he is faced with the reality of his love for Ayah, as well as his anxieties concerning his own future and that of his teams. Just as a fully alive and also transformed Max works with the others to go to LA so his mother can research them, Tala calls with a warning of nuclear catastrophe. The world treaty ceasing the production or existence of firearms has been shattered by the American president being assassinated and the discovery of Biovolt's Abbey and their trained assassins. They must get out. But no sooner have Kai, Tyson, and Ayah found a boat to escape on to America, they are captured by a group that know far too well what they are, and how to keep them contained. Facing dismemberment in the face of science or whatever these hunters want from them, it seems to be the end of the line. A harsh reality that they are no longer seen as human faces them.

But then Tyson, still human, and therefore underestimated, manages to wriggle them loose. But they're in the middle of the ocean, on a ship full of their captors with no qualms about killing one or two of them. With bullets and darts flying, Tyson takes a stand with Dragoon, and Kai takes the fall for the bullets heading his way.

The last thing Kai perceives is the bright blue light of Dragoon and Ayah pulling out too many poisoned darts from his ribs and chest. Then all goes black, with little hope for waking up.

But wake up he does, in the midst of a typhoon. Those on the ship who weren't killed by Dragoon are killed by the storm, and Kai and Ayah survive by the skin of their nails. They are given a time to recover before the egg of stormwinds hatches and a scaled, draconic Tyson is born, as energetic (and hungry) as ever. With no idea where they are, Kai sets out for his first unassisted flight into the sky, where he spots an incoming Max, who has come into his own as Draciel of the Sea. With Max's arrival comes the knowledge that their ship is sinking, and fast, and they set out in nothing more than a life boat, depending on Max's power in water to get them to land. But Max is still mortal and passes out from exertion. Kai once more finds himself the lone protector of his exhausted, sleeping friends.

When they wake up washed up on land, it seems peace and safety has finally come to their team of...whatever they were. But just as they were setting out to find a good, roasted seafood breakfast, they are surrounded by gunpoint and led into, not just a hunter's ship, but into a hidden United States Military base, with an entire, high-tech lab dedicated to piecing them apart bit by bit, and they aren't all concerned with human rights. After all, the Bladebreakers aren't human anymore.

It's the last straw on a very strained camels back, and Kai bursts into a panicked plume of flame. Let it all burn. If this world was set on destroying his team, it could burn as well.

 _Now on to the seventh installment of_ _ **Before Beasts**_ _..._


	2. Beasts Series Order

**Order of the "Before Beasts" series:**

 _Sound_  
 _Fire_  
 _Wind_  
 _Water_  
 _Metal_  
 _Storms_  
 _Lightning_  
 _Ice_  
 _Light_  
 _Time_


	3. Tiger and the Pheonix

Before Beasts, There Was Lightning

Book 7

By LoweFantasy

1

It wouldn't be the first time he came to in a place he didn't remember. At least he wasn't throwing up or freezing to death this time.

Granted, the overwhelming exhaustion wasn't much better, as he found himself barely having the strength to push himself over onto his back, which, of course, his stupid wings in funny positions would interrupt. He had to make do with his side.

White. The floor he was on was white. Almost invisible seams crisscrossed it to the walls, also of the same, bleaching white. It hurt to look at it.

The next unpleasant fact he found was that he was naked. Nothing good ever happened when you woke up naked, drunk or no. Not that his grand total of being drunk one time would give him much experience in that. Common sense helped, though.

Taking deep, settling breaths, Kai examined what he could see of himself as he shifted through the blurry memories.

 _I caught on fire_. He changed his mind and closed his eyes against the whiteness. The heartburn had reacted to whatever seeing the lab had induced in him and brought the fire to his skin. He recalled his wings bursting aflame first, then his clothes. The marshal scientist had whirled around, screaming words he couldn't recall. Then more fire, just fire…fire everywhere. He had been trying to get the fire everywhere, blast everything away, burn everything away, burn it all.

His eyes snapped open and he found new reasons to get up. Where had Ayah been in all this? What had protected her from the fire?

Need only pushed him so far, and he ended up having to get on his belly again in order to get on his hand and knees, like a baby that had fallen down while learning to walk. His arms trembled like reeds in the wind.

 _Hatching all over again,_ he thought blithely. But it did give him his first sight of his wings, along with a clue as to what had happened.

White. They were sticky with foamy, white.

 _Some sort of fire retardant._

"Mr. Hiwatari, if you can hear me, please respond."

The mechanical voice brought his attention to the one wall of the white cell that he hadn't seen. The site of the glass wall and the machines beyond it nearly brought the bile back up to his throat, but whatever fire he had left simmered like a coal in his gut. _All burnt out._

He found the Scientist Marshal's face and snarled his favorite, pretty Russian word.

"I did nothing to warrant that," said the doctor pleasantly. "You're the one who burst into flame around billions of dollars worth of equipment and killed three men, seriously burning two more. One might not even make it."

Kai did happen to notice the fair amount of scorch marks and a few broken metal things dangling from the ceiling behind the doctor's consoles. That gave him some satisfaction. The deaths? That went over his guilt control. Every man who picked up a gun in a time of promised peace knew his fate.

"Where's Ayah?" Best get to business. He wasn't up to any hero-villain banter today.

The bad black polo man raised a white eyebrow. "Funny you should ask that. I'll tell you this much: you didn't burn her to smithereens."

Something heavy, acidic, and vile constricted in his gut, as though a black hole had come into being among his organs. His arms buckled at that, and he had no choice but to come face to face with the strange, white flooring. It felt like a tile, of sorts, but not like any tile he'd met.

 _Damn it._ He just had to go freak out when he needed his energy the most. If existing as Kai didn't kill him, this sudden case of panic attacks certainly would.

"May I ask why you did that?" The man asked. "Granted, I'm much more interested in her right now, but I can give a human bomb some time."

Kai muttered another pretty sample of his native tongue.

"I thought so. I guess you need more time to, uh, _cool off?"_

Kai didn't have to look to know the doctor had walked away from the console. When he finally did turn his head, who knew how much time later, he saw more of the black armored men on the other side and felt himself smile. So it wouldn't be the classic leave the hero to sink into the tank of sharks while I go somewhere else to cackle.

 _This isn't a kid's cartoon anymore,_ he told that wry part of himself and finally let himself flop back onto the floor. It couldn't be helped. He could feel sleep coming over him. In the background of darkness, his stomach cramped with hunger. When had been the last time he had eaten a good size meal? Something with meat.

He woke up with the distinct impression that he was not alone.

He snapped up to his hands and knees, faster than before, and whipped around, just to wilt as he recognized the amber eyed Chinese boy sitting against the wall. He gave Kai a fitting, wan smile on seeing he was awake.

"Hey, Kai."

"Ray," Kai managed, letting his forehead fall to the floor again. How long had he been asleep? It couldn't have been too long, he still felt like a used match. "Do I need to ask?"

"Nope. Don't want to be here as much as you. Freaking knocked me out in California. Woke up being walked into, well…you burn the lab?"

"Not enough of it." His voice bounced back to him from the floor, hurting his ears.

"Nice enough. You're looking better. But I guess that's to expect. You probably started working out the moment you could walk."

Kai snorted. "Lot of good that did me."

"Need help sitting up?"

" _No._ "

"Okay, okay, I get the hint. I should have known better than to ask."

A brief quiet fell between them. When Ray spoke, it broke Kai out of a doze he hadn't realized he'd fallen into, still on his forearms and knees.

"Was Max and Tyson with you? Are…were they okay? Max just took off the moment his mom told him you guys had been taken by pirates."

Kai puffed out a breath of humor. Pirates. That was cute. "They were fine. Better off than we are, probably." He turned his head to look at Ray, feeling his scalp tingle with twisting hair. "Why they put you with me and not with them?"

"Beats me. By the way, you want my shirt?" He tugged at the knee length, Chinese tunic that he often wore.

"Only if you're okay with ruining it." Kai jerked up his wings to make the point.

"Oh, I was thinking as some sort of, I dunno, kilt of some sorts. Gird up your loins, or something."

"I hope you're not trying to be funny."

"Of course not, I'm not Tyson, though I am trying to help."

Kai sighed wearily. "Fine. I'll take the shirt. Just give me a moment."

He let himself fall once more into the darkness, somewhat comforted by the fact that at least he wasn't alone, however small of a comfort it was.


	4. Closest to the Beast

**Whew. Nearly had a heart attack when I opened "Lightning" and saw it had somehow been replaced by the 7,000 or so words I had of "Before Beasts, There Was Ice" that I've been working on. I was all googling how to revert word documents, screaming inside, when then I remembered...**

 **I backed up all my completed stories on google docs...**

 **Heart racing, hope painful, I open up google docs and, sure enough, gloriously gloriously, "Lightning" was there. Nearly cried.**

 **SO! Lesson of the day? Always back up your work. O.O ALWAYS**

2

Ray tapped him awake. The blinding white of the room made it impossible to tell how much time had passed. For a minute, he considered ignoring him and going back to the darkness where girl's he loved weren't burned or kidnapped.

But Ray shoved a folded square of material in his face. "They brought you pants."

Kai forced himself up, though his eyes weren't so willing to cooperate. It disgusted him to think that he had been sleeping deeply enough for a door to open and close without his knowing. On that note.

"How?"

Ray pointed to a white square of tile near the glass wall that looked no different than the others. Besides it, however, was a plastic mop bucked he hadn't seen before.

"Bucket?"

"Bathroom."

Yay. Kai took the pants. "In that case…"

"Be my guest."

It wouldn't be the first time he had to use a bucket as a latrine in circumstances like these. But it did pound in his vow to never end up like this again. Screw civilization. Once he got out, he was going off grid. Tala had been top of their class on living in the boonies.

The sweatpants they had left him had a drawstring, which he tied beneath his tail. Aviary wedgie. Hey, whatever it took to make him flight ready at a chance. Now to get to getting the crap off his wings, which, after a few flaps, he found had become more powder than sticky. Ray coughed.

"Hey, small space! Warn me, at least!"

Kai waited until Ray had covered his nose and mouth with his tunic before pumping again. He had to wait for all the powder to settle before trying to beat more off them, even resorting to using his hands. At least he felt more awake and energetic now, if still starving.

As though to remind him of this fact, Ray muttered behind his shirt: "Man, I'm starving."

"Think you're hungry now, wait until they force you to change," Kai said.

"I remember that. You ate Tyson and Gramps out of the house."

"If we're lucky, maybe you'll eat them out too."

"Yeah, that," Ray cautiously lowered his tunic from his face. "Any idea who kidnapped you? From the boat."

Kai licked his fingers and brought a wing around to his lap. "Nope." He ran his wet thumb and forefinger down a feather, removing the last of the powder. He was going to need a lot of spit. "The one Ayah talked to seemed to know a lot about her kind, though." No way, he couldn't do this alone. "Give me a hand?"

Ray scooted closer to see what Kai was doing exactly, then he nodded and settled himself on Kai's other side with his other wing and started licking his fingers.

"This stuff better not be poisonous," he said as he gently tugged his fingers down the first feather.

"I've seen them coat Christmas trees with this stuff. Can't be that dangerous."

"I've never heard of anyone saying it was a good idea to suck on a painted pine tree, though."

"Yeah, but you got kids around Christmas trees, right? Kids are always putting crap in their mouth."

"I'll just stop if I'm feeling sick, yeah?"

A click from the side of the room, close to the bucket, drew their attention. The square Ray had pointed out was coming apart from the wall into a large drawer. The two exchanged glances before Ray got up to check it out.

"It's food," he said, somewhat hesitantly. "And a…packet of baby wipes?"

Kai looked out at the watching guard. One of them returned to the line up, as though he had never moved, and didn't meet Kai's eye.

"Ten bucks says it's drugged," said Kai.

"Ten bucks says I don't care. We need our strength." Ray picked up two trays and brought them back.

A delicious scent came to Kai's nose. Within a millisecond he had produced more saliva than he had at any other time in his life.

Sure enough, a large bowl of thick, greasy, meaty looking stew was set in front of him.

"Especially you," said Ray quietly.

Kai spared him a look before taking up the spoon and settling in to the stew. The good sized soup bowl was empty long before he wanted it to.

"Here," Ray pushed over his half-empty bowl.

"Excuse me?"

"You need it more than me," said Ray, yellow eyes set beneath dark brows. "And in coming events, you'll probably be more useful anyways. Just eat it."

"If this is drugged," started Kai, even as he picked up the bowl.

But soon that was gone as well, and Kai found himself fighting to not curl back up on the cold tile and sleep. Ray had gotten out one some of the moist towelettes and had cleaned a good portion of Kai's left wing. Kai grabbed a handful and got to work on his right. As they worked, Ray made light conversation, in the unobtrusive way that had always made Kai the most at ease around him out of their team.

"How is Ayah doing? Can she fly yet?"

"Yeah."

"And Tyson, are they going to change him too, you think?"

"Already done. Happened while we were fighting said 'pirates.'"

"That quick?"

"No. Ayah sang during the fight. He egged up afterwards. Brought in a huge typhoon that killed whatever was left of the crew."

"What the…"

"Not something I'd like to relive."

"Is he…does he…?"

"Have scales, claws, and a dragon's ass? Yes."

Ray grinned at that, though it ran away far too quickly and they fell back into a quiet as they worked. A fair bit of elbow grease later, Kai found himself relatively clean along with a mountain of spent baby wipes. He yawned and stretched, careful to spread his wings away from Ray's head.

"Wonder what will happen next," said Ray, saving Kai the effort and just laying down on the floor with his arms behind his head.

"Hnngh."

"I can't stand just waiting here when anything could be happening to them…to her…"

Yep. And Kai was doing a fine job not thinking about that, thank you Ray.

"Any chance some of your Abbey stuff…that's a stupid question."

"Yep."

More awkward silence. Kai debated on whether to do some sit ups or take a nap. Exercising always organized his thoughts and feelings the best, but he could use the energy.

"Kai?"

"Hm."

"Nothing. I just can't stand how quiet this room can get. You think it's soundproof too?"

"Depends on how much metal was used in its construction."

"Metal, huh? Is that something Ayah said?"

"No. Abbey stuff."

"Guess they would teach you about sound proofing." He cut off abruptly. "We got company."

That solved his nap or exercise problem. It was game time.

Ray sat up and pulled his legs in, but neither of them stood as they watched the small team of men in varying polo shirts, BDUs, and lab coats filled in behind the console. The good doctor marshal was among them, along with two men escorting a bound and muzzled Ayah.

Kai lost all awareness of the others as he locked in on her, scanning her for burns. She had a bandage on one side of her cheek and arm on the same side, and someone had tied up her hair, but that was all. They had dressed her in a plain, white hospital gown.

Then he came to her big, terrified, blue eyes, and the old heartburn came back. The shadows beneath them had intensified, giving her a hollowed out look.

The marshal talked a bit to the others, not that Ray or Kai could hear anything, which answered their sound proof question. The marshal finished by turning around and pressing something on the console.

"Your bit beast Drigger is of the electric element, correct?"

Ray didn't even flinch. "Beats me."

That gave the doctor pause before the speaker clicked on again.

"You best be certain, as we won't know what to provide you."

The Chinese blader frowned, and Kai thought he could see a tiger's wariness in his cat-like eyes.

"I don't think electricity and lightning are entirely the same," said Ray scornfully. "Probably about the same as a house cat is to a wild tiger. But go ahead, give me some batteries and sing your tune, but nothing's going to happen."

"Oh?" said Mr. Ugly Polo.

Ray crossed his arms and smirked, flashing a fang, which suddenly struck Kai with something he had only thought of once before: how different Ray was from them, physically. They had only talked about it once before, and Tyson had shrugged it off. But having fangs and slit-like pupils wasn't exactly normal, was it?

Ray showed an open palm. "I don't have Drigger. Without him, nothing will happen, and Ayah won't have anything to amplify. It's just little ol' me."

To Kai's disappointment, the man didn't act a bit discouraged.

"Is that all?" buzzed the speaker. "Well, in that case, I'm sure it will comfort you to know that Drigger was found in Dr. Tate's custody. Apparently her boy brought it up from the ocean with him. Always useful to have a turtle for a friend when you drop your beyblade into the ocean, hmm?"

Ray said nothing, his smirk gone and those strange pupils of his slit to a thin line.

 _Why have I never thought about it before?_ Kai found himself pulling his attention from Ayah to Ray. Could it be that Ray was so different because he had never been entirely human? Could it be he could have been the closest to Ayah out of all of them the whole time? Could it be Drigger wasn't as far back in his bloodline as their bitbeasts were to the rest of them? But would that mean anything for what the marshal was planning on doing?

"What about Kai?" Ray asked. "You can't shoot a bunch of electricity into the room with him around."

The doctor shrugged. "I've heard Mr. Hiwatari can be quite resourceful. Besides, I'm afraid this is the only high energy area we have, fire proof included."

A few of the watching men around him flinched and said something to him. The doctor shook his head and said something back, which Ray and Kai would not be privy to.

"You're willing to risk his life?" asked Ray, his lips curling back.

"He already did that when he decided to spontaneously combust," said the doctor blandly. "Besides, there are plenty of other fire elemental bit beasts out there, none of which were conditioned and raised to be serial killers."

That hit Kai harder than he expected. _Serial killer._ Not assassin, not soldier, not spy or tool. A serial killer. Those psychotic maniacs that raped, diced, skinned, whatever else just because they felt like it.

Something must have been on his face, because Ray jumped to his feet snarling.

"Take that back! Kai is a better man than you'll _ever_ be!"

"Technically he's not a man," said the speaker. "His humanity is even up to debate, but the facts remain the same. Kai Hiwatari was one of the most efficient agents the Biovolt Abbey ever trained, and he proved his deadliness mere moments after leaving his teammates, despite the presence of the girl he acted to be so protective of." The doctor snorted. "In most States of America, murder is punishable by death anyways. So, shall we sign off these concerns—"

"NO!" Ray roared, hands fisted to his sides. "Go screw yourself! I'm not doing anything!"

While Kai was touched by Ray's loyalty (not that anyone would ever hear of it), Kai doubted Ray would have to do anything. That's how these types worked. One way or another, they'd get what they wanted from you, whether you cooperated or not.

The doctor seemed to be thinking along the same lines, for he turned around, lifting what could have only been a beyblade to the small crowd of onlookers. Ayah's pale eyes looked at something in his other hand and looked back to Ray and Kai with her brow furrowed in dismay.

"Well, this will be interesting." Kai groaned as he rolled to his feet and pushed himself up.

"Go to the corner," said Ray. "We got to put space between us, no matter what they do."

"I don't think that will matter much." He gave Ray another once over and asked, off the top of his head, "Have you ever had claws?"

"What?"

"You're in luck, boys," the marshal had turned back to the console. "A couple of these fine gentlemen happened to have done some studying in beyblade mechanics and have brought one of their automatic launchers. And since I can't trust either of you to play nice with it once we get it in there," the speaker clicked off and the doctor gestured to a few of the armed men, which immediately strode to the side and out of sight. Moments later, the square that opened up into the drawer where Ray had found their food lifted out, this time with friends, and an opening large enough for a man appeared—along with said man, gun out.

Out of habit, Kai reached for his hips, just to find, too late, Silver Dranzer had to be back at the raft. No amount of gun drills had prepared him for this.

Two more filed out behind the first, weapons raised, backs against the glass. Only once the fourth one came did they start to approach.

Kai warily put up his hands, mind racing.

"Those bullets could hit anyone in here," he said.

The men said nothing as the fourth came at them with cuffs. When Ray didn't offer his wrists, the man kicked him in the gut and spun him around, somehow gathering both his wrists in the same move.

Kai jerked forward, fire on his tongue, heat bleeding past his lips.

The three gunmen converged on him, barrels to eye level. All Kai could see of their faces was the small line of skin between their black, smooth masks and their helmets.

If they pulled the trigger, they would be the more unlikely ones to be hurt by ricochet.

Kai swallowed hard and allowed his hands and ankles to be cuffed and pushed into a corner. At least they hadn't been brave enough to get his hands beneath his wings and tie them behind him. Where had this weird string of optimism in him come from anyways? Not that he paid it much attention.

Ray was left in the middle of the room, tied up much the same as him. Just as he thought the men were done with them, a black muzzle, the same as Ayah's, was snapped over his mouth. Horror spiked up his skin as he wondered if this was what the rest of his life would be like: tied down like a rabid dog.

He found Ayah's gaze again and just stared, one muzzled bird to the other. He didn't even know what they were supposed to call themselves.

"Kai, I'm sorry."

 _Shut up, Ray. Just shut up._


	5. Escape of the Tiger

**Yep, next book is "Ice" and the one after that is "Time" and my computer is wigging out so I can see what I'm typing, so hopefully this works out. Thanks for your thoughts on the story! I hope you like this update.**

3

The setting up the bey launcher was anticlimactic. It looked just the same as all the others he and his team had encountered: like a Hollywood mechanic for a Star Wars film took a saucer with a turret and stuck it onto stubby, metal legs. Drigger was loaded in, along with another beyblade that wouldn't be winning any tournaments with that hunk of metal design. But Kai recognized it well enough. It wasn't meant for fighting, but for sound. They could have gotten it from anywhere. Kai wouldn't have even been surprised at this point if the captors of Ayah, the pirates, and whoever killed her family were all in cahoots with the US Government now.

Ray managed to crunch himself up into a seating position by the time the guns and men filed out of their surprisingly small chamber. At least they took the pee bucket with them. Five stars for housekeeping.

Then came the unexciting, hard part: watching the doctor coerce Ayah into doing what he wanted. By the time they had her muzzle up and her mouth to the mic, Kai's own muzzle was near to dripping off his face from the heat. At least the high grade plastic bits were. The metal just shimmered.

 _Does she realize the room's soundproof?_ For their sake, he hoped she did. Then she could screech out their brains with Kai and Ray unharmed. That had been the only thing stopping her other times, right?

The speaker clicked on. The doc's voice sounded from a distance.

"Launch."

The machine spat out Ray's blade. Then the heavy, sounding blade. They crashed one after the other, tipping to and fro

"Drigger," Ray gasped, almost reflexively. Kai's sympathies jerked for him. He knew what he was going through.

 _The last of the four sacred bit beasts._

Ayah clenched her cuffed hands against her breasts and closed her eyes. He could hear her shaking breath over the speakers.

Somehow, despite his discomfort and fear, Kai somehow felt that this was how things should be. Not captured in a box or experimented on, but that it was time for Drigger to be freed. Then they would somehow all be together again, the four championship bladers, the four weirdos from around the world, now to be the four freaks together. It made his chest ache.

The sound that came over the speakers was as inhuman as it had been for the other three bladers. It was the first time Kai had ever heard Ayah singing the amplified version of Drigger's vibrations, and it jumped and parried over his ear drums, sending every hair and feather of his on end, like static.

Ray didn't fight it. He just sat there, listening. It was almost as though he felt the odd sense of acceptance that Kai had.

"Man the volt gun," came the doctor's voice in the background.

A square moved in the ceiling, and a mechanic arm lowered in, armed with what looked like a taser on steroids. It cracked and popped, stopping just above Ray's head.

Kai tensed and prayed to God that they wouldn't touch Ray with that monstrosity.

But even as Ayah's voice crackled and popped alongside the electricity, gravity seemed to be lifting from Ray. The bound tail of his hair lifted from the ground, floating, and his clothes fluttered up from his skin. Sparks, barely visible against all the blaring white, snapped from his form.

The audience of armed men and the doc's friends watched on in dead silence.

Suddenly, Kai felt his hair and feathers prickling. They had begun to rustle as well, lifted by the unseen force.

 _Crap…_ he was so getting electrocuted, he just knew it. Like life didn't suck enough.

Ray's hands flashed out. Flung into the crackling line of the taser.

Kai gave a shout. Melted plastic splashed from his face.

And Ray's eyes had opened, bright gold as sunlight.

If the white room had been brilliant before, it became blinding. Blue-white light sprung about Ray in earnest, staking across the room. A few jolted into Kai, stiffening and cracking muscles he had no control over. It burned as fire could never do, and the pain reminded him of what it had use to be. He tried to cry out to Ray, who had begun to shift and tremble as though through a strobe light. His feet burst apart, throwing bits of metal into the walls, missing Kai barely. His skin darkened, a tan in fast forward, and black stripes faded into being on muscles that were swelling. Ray's legs bent, feet lengthening, and in a sudden jerk he threw back his head, displaying an open maw of sharpened teeth.

Just as Ray let out a heart stalling roar, Drigger shot out from the circle of beyblades and shattered into the glass wall, spiking a giant crack down the middle as it did so.

Ayah stopped singing. But even though his beyblade was now destroyed and the song gone, Ray didn't let go of the jumping electricity from the volt gun. If anything, he just kept swelling, long ponytail lashing, clothes beginning to fray along the edges.

Then another wayward jolt hit Kai, this time in the gut, and he screamed. The half destroyed muzzle did nothing to muffle it, and his cry echoed about the chamber.

Ray flinched. "K…Kai..."

It barely sounded like Ray at all.

And with another almighty roar, Ray swung his arms apart, snapping the metal cuffs like paper, grabbed hold of the gun, and tore it out of the ceiling.

The lights flickered…and went black.

The sudden lack of sound after so much left Kai in a daze. Or perhaps that was the fried sensation of being shocked multiple times.

 _At least I'm still alive,_ he thought blithely.

The silence was broken by the scraping of stone and the squeal of tearing metal. Red emergency lights flickered on in the back of the lab.

And suddenly, after an extra scream of breaking metal, he could hear the chaos outside the lab.

"Everyone to the exit—he's out! Men, on the entrance! Don't let him pass!—someone muzzle that girl, quick!"

Kai started to laugh. He hurt. It was dark. He was gagged and tied in a corner and the girl he loved was being manhandled, but his enemies were on the run…and Ray had turned into the freaking Thunder Hulk.

"So not fair, Ray, so not fair," he cracked, laughing and laughing, even after someone had gotten back up electricity to turn on half the lights and reveal that Kai was once more alone in that horrid white room. Ray had left behind a new hole in the wall. Freak had probably torn out the stone door with his claws.

Closer to inhuman indeed.

The armed men had multiplied and created a barrier to the one side of the room where the door to the chamber had to be. The marshal doctor stood alone by Ayah, who watched on with wide eyes.

"Find him," said the old man, his high forehead glistening with sweat, glasses white with reflected light. "He has to be in this room still. Someone watch the girl, I need to see to the others."

A few men around the figures spread out to the other machinery of the room. The doctor shoved Ayah's arm into one.

"Protect her with your life," he said. "And will someone get the firebomb to shut up!"

Kai just laughed harder. He felt positively villainous. Especially as he felt the last plastic dribbles of the muzzle falling off, leaving just a metal, caged frame that would do nothing.

"That's right!" he crowed. "Someone come shut me up!"

"Just close the damn door!" someone cried.

Two men reached through instantly and yanked up the heavy, stone door by its broken metal arms, which fit back seamlessly into the wall.

"Aw, come on!" Kai cried, breathless. "I wanted barbeque! Hey Ray, you want barbeque?"

He thought he could hear a high alarm begin to go off, but he couldn't be sure. Sound had once more been cut off and he was left alone to the sound of his own mad cackling, which wasn't so funny when it was all you could hear. But, then, it wasn't really amusement that had gotten him laughing.

He lifted his cuffs up and hooked the edge of them onto the leather strap on the side of his face. The superheated leather snapped easily, and he swung his head to rid himself of the thing.

The tile door, which hadn't been all that secure from the start, slid forward. From a gap he thought too small for anyone to slip through appeared Ray, no longer slender and lean, but large enough that the fabric of his tunic strained against the outline of his pecs.

"So not fair," Kai said, even though all of Ray's attention was to sliding in and pressing the tile door back into place. As he turned, Kai caught sight of a furry something cross the bottom edge of his long top. "Do you have a tail?"

Then the scene outside the glass froze. Every body, except for the white form of Ayah, went rigid and stiff. Then they all crumpled in a heap of limbs and armor, including the balding, bespeckled form of the Marshal Scientist. Somehow, Ayah's muzzled had come off and she had her mouth open, clearly singing as loudly as she could, with her eyes squeezed shut.

Ray only nodded once, than hurried over to Kai's side with new, fluid-like grace.

"Did you…" Kai looked to Ayah, then back at Ray. "They didn't see you?"

"Yep," Ray's voice had dropped a bit as well, not that it had been all that high before. He used a claw to tear into the shackles, bruising Kai's wrists, but he wasn't about to complain. Except—

"So not fair," he didn't bother keeping the whine out this time.

"Hey, if this had happened while we were back home, I might have been licking power sockets or something." Ray snapped the cuffs on his ankles as well. "Best we hurry. We can't stay in this cell while Ayah sings the place to death. We still have to find Max and Tyson."

"And a way off this rock."

Kai accepted Ray's hand up and only took a moment to straighten out his tail feathers, which had been crunched into uncomfortable positions during the whole trial, through one means or another.

"Oh, that reminds me—Drigger wanted me to tell you that this place is powered by geothermal energy."

Kai stared. "He talked to you too?" Was there any other way he could have gotten the shorter end of the stick? Any at all?

"Hey, that's all I got, now come on!"

Ray had to tap on the glass to get Ayah's attention so she'd close her mouth, though it might have been because she ran out of air. She was gasping for breath when they finally wriggled out from the mess of machinery that the tiny entranceway to the chamber had become, with two wrenched out doors. Even as Kai and Ray were stepping over bodies and guns, Ayah half leapt, half glided across the space and onto Kai. He would have toppled over if it weren't for Ray, who put a hand to his back.

Ayah didn't utter a sound. She just clutched her arms around his neck and buried her face in whatever space was left between her arms and his face. The scrape of her bandage against his skin was a harsh reminder.

"How bad is it?" he asked, suddenly desperate to know. "Did they hurt you? What happened?"

Ayah shook her head and pulled back, if only a little. "You didn't burn me badly. It was…the fire went mostly around me, didn't even touch me. It was the heat—it just made my sunburns really bad, that's all."

Kai scowled. That wasn't good enough. But it would have to do for now.

"There's an alarm, more of those guys are bound to come flooding in any moment now," said Ray, looking more than a little irritated by the fact that Ayah was hung around Kai. "Ayah, can you tell us where the others are?"

"I don't know, they just took me to that corner over there…"

Despite the fact that she did feel awfully nice pressing close to him like this, his shoulders and neck had already started to hurt and Ray was right. He tapped on her arms and she quickly let go. He took in the white cotton pants and hospital gown they had dressed her in and figured it would have to do for now. At least she wasn't half-naked like him.

Geothermal…what was he suppose to do with that? It wasn't like he could command heat from a distance or anything. He'd only done a few experiments with fire, and nothing else.

"You two look around for a ventilation shaft or a port. A place with this many computers has to have excellent ventilation and require a lot of electricity, which means a lot of power cords. Probably near the ceiling."

"You?" asked Ray, already beginning to bounce on his heels. Kai caught sight of the could-be tail swishing from behind his legs.

"I'll be looking too…as well as for some flammables."

They split up. Kai didn't waste time watching the new supershow of Ray, who was probably pouncing higher into the catacombs with inhuman speed. Ayah couldn't find a space big enough for her wing span, so she settling for looking around at a lower level. Kai busied himself with the cupboards, looking for chemicals or paper. He found both, though the names on the labels didn't encourage him. They were mostly solvents and cans of oxygen spray cleaners. They'd work for grenades, he supposed, but not for much smoke, which was what he was aiming for.

"I found one!"

That was quick.

Conveniently, Ray found a ladder up to the space he was talking about, which was tucked far back away from the majority of the lab and into a corner. A large, square ventilation tunnel half filled with cords and hoses of varying sizes opened into the wall.

"Do we even know where this leads?" Ray asked quietly.

"Somewhere an electrician could at least go," Kai started back down the ladder. "You two go. I won't be able to fit."

The two gave him baffled looks. Kai sighed.

"No really," he said, lifting his wings. "I'm twice the size of Ayah, and you might look like Jackie Chan squashed with a body builder, but I saw you squeeze through that crack you called a door back there. Besides, I got stuff to do here."

"I'm not leaving you behind with a base of armed men," said Ray, fangs flashing. Multiple sharp teeth. There'd be no ignoring those now.

Ayah just looked pale and pleading.

Kai didn't have time for this. "Just go! Find Max and Tyson! I'll find you guys."

"I won't—"

Kai hissed, and a string of flame, a bright line of liquid gold, splashed near Ray's feet. The tiger jumped back—and quite far—banging into the wall just as Kai half expected. Cat-like reflexes.

"GO! Trust me! Please!"

It was probably the please that did it. Ray still shot him an angry glare before urging Ayah to go up the ladder first.

"Hurry," Kai said. "There might be a lot of smoke. I'll try to keep most of it away, but still…"

"Just don't get shot." And Ray was gone.


	6. Flee to Steam

**Life is good. I have no zits, my husband got paid, and I've got a story to give ya all. Good life.**

4

Metal hardly smoked, let alone burned. But plastic and whatever paint that might have coated the metal gave him a good, greasy black cloud.

Kai had no mercy, breathing and coaxing fire as far as it would go. He found, after the sensation of the heartburn flowing to his fingertips, that if he focused on moving that heat outwards to his hands rather than up through his breathing, he could conjure fire from his hands, though not nearly as hot as what he could spew from his mouth. He tried to do most of his work at the foot of the ladder where Ray and Ayah had left so that he could beat his wings against the oncoming smoke, which oddly seemed to listen to his efforts.

Soon not only were really fancy, expensive looking research machines left in melted, burning ruins with circuits snapping static as they died, but he had a good bit of an ungainly fire munching along the floors and walls. He expected the more fire he gave out, the more tired he'd become, but as some heat started to return to him from his efforts, he found his strength returning.

Most strange of all was how the smoke had little to no affect on him. The heat billowing out from his pores seemed to be what kept it all at bay, but he tried to keep low nonetheless, as well as it from the ventilation shaft.

As expected, the metal security doors flew open.

Several men cursed and yelled.

Kai took advantage of the thick cover of smoke and darted past, keeping his wings tucked close. Boots stumbled back and he brushed against quite a bit, but for all the soldiers knew it was just their comrades brushing close. The short entry hall was filled with coughing.

Using the keycard he found off the Marshal Scientist's body, Kai opened the last door and darted out into the hall, where he nearly bowled into the crowd of waiting plebs.

Which took one look at Kai and fled, practically climbing over one another to get out of his way. Kai couldn't help but smile as he caught one by the back of his badly chosen business shirt and threw him against the ground.

"Where's the entrance?"

Unintentionally, sparks exhumed from his mouth.

The man all but squealed in terror.

"Exit!"

"D-down the hall! Two floors up! Not sure—"

Kai snuffed at him, throwing more sparks, but decided that was the best he could get. This was a secret government base after all…which made him wonder how these idiots had gotten here so quick, and for some cute little secret base tour. Perhaps they were higher ups?

Either or, he turned tail and went after the fleeing plebs. He made sure to check the interrogation room, just in case they had left Tyson or Max in there, but it was empty.

Kai kept going, laughing as one of the scientists caught sight of him and renewed his speed with a shrill scream that got the others going. His laugh came to an abrupt stop when he reached the second landing and half a dozen black rifles.

He dropped just in time to the steps below. Gunfire puttered in rapid succession. Bullets bounced about, throwing sparks on the metal steps and railings. Black holes sprinkled over the white-washed, cement walls.

Kai dug in deep and breathed up. His geyser of flames bounced off the walls like water and up towards the men. The smell of burnt Kevlar wasn't unlike that of melted vinyl and hair. Men screamed. Before his fire had dissipated, Kai flung himself up the next flight of stairs, through two flailing, burning men, and fists first into a third. His old training kicked in and, as easy as riding a bike, he threw the third men into the last two and bounded over them.

A familiar rush returned to him. He liked this. This power over others.

Then the thought was gone and he was pounding up the second flight of stairs. On reaching the door that should have eventually led to the exit, he hesitated, then continued going up. Alarms screeched through the tall, column like stairway as a door above him opened and he heard the pounding of more feet. Before the rows of Kevlar spotted him, he breathed deep and out. He strained to keep the fire going until he reached a step that would push him through the men. Bullets sprayed, a superheated gun misfired with a small implosion, and a searing blade of pain slashed through his upper right arm.

The cacophony of yells, screams, and more bullets followed him up to the last floor, where a plain, white door waited him. He threw it open, struggling to breathe in as he did so.

A small room, lined with consoles and windows, met him on the other side. Men and women in white button up shirts and black pants jumped back from their seats, headphones and mouthpieces on all of their heads. Outside the windows, the lay of the island and sea spread out beneath them.

 _A control tower?_ Which meant two very bad things. This place had planes or seriously bad war machines. They'd be able to see Kai or Ayah no matter where they flew, and there was no hiding on the ocean.

Kai huffed out the breath he had been holding, but only a small splatter of flames came out. He was panting for breath. Adrenaline could only move his spent body so far.

Nevertheless, the control personal screamed and scrambled for the emergency fire exit. Through the noise, Kai could hear the thundering boots coming up from behind him.

With the loudest shout he could manage, he rushed towards the fire emergency as well, pushing sparks and flame out from his hot hands as he could to herd the lot back. Some poor sod had been nice enough to reach the door before him and opened it out onto what Kai thought at first was a dead 40 foot drop to the bunker roof below. He didn't bother looking for a ladder, but launched himself out the door and spread his wings.

Buttery ocean air caught him instantly, lifting him up.

Gunfire spit from the opening and he arched around, flapping and spiraling upward. He had to distract them—give the others time to escape. At least, up here, gliding towards the open sky, he somehow found it easier to breathe.

 _A distraction won't be enough,_ he realized. It had been stupid of him to assume they could sneak out, what with how much panic and destruction they had already wrecked with Ray escaping and Ayah vibrating out a room full of people. But how could five, very non-bullet proof freaks escape what an American military base had in store? Especially once he rose high enough to spot a set of battle ships that had been hidden by an over crop of land on the other side of the island. _To keep them hidden from satellite and planes._ How he had missed this building on his brief look over the island both confounded him and made sense. It was illegal, after all.

As he angled himself out into a glide around the base, keeping an eye out for the others, a loud, pang like boom came from beneath him, with a high pitched whistle on its heels. He felt more than saw something whizz past him.

No way. No way no way—was that freaking anti-air arsenal? He had to get out of the sky, he had to—but even has he dropped, jerking randomly into the best evasive maneuvers he could handle, he couldn't find a way out. Once he reached the ground he'd be too spent to run, and the green carpet of foliage wasn't so much a jungle or forest as it was a sparse glen of grasses and palm trees.

He jerked back up, missing the top of an especially tall palm tree by inches and using that momentum to gain altitude. As he crawled his way higher, head pounding with the force of his heart and burning with tiring muscles, he realized he had somehow gotten turned around and was facing the tall, brunt side of the cone shaped mountain.

He had assumed it was a volcano.

 _Geothermal energy._ Drigger knew more about what Dranzer was capable of. Kai had never tried to control just hot things, and molten rock or steam was quite different from fire. Even if he did try, he had no clue what to even do or why Drigger had pointed that out anyways. Was it possible the stupid tiger didn't really grasp what they were up against? Could it be the tiger just pointed it out in case Kai could figure out something to do with it?

…Most likely.

Another pang-boom and something heavy whistled just beneath him.

He had no choice. Spotting a momentary spoof of gas or a small geyser on the side of the mountain facing the ocean, he made a beeline for it, figuring the more direct he could get to the heat the better.

 _What if I somehow hurt the others?_ An image of Ayah's bandaged cheek and arm came to mind. She had said that the fire had avoided her completely, but that the heat of just being around it had still burned her. Could he trust whatever subconscious controlled the fire to keep away from his friends?

The vent turned out to be much larger than he expected. A jagged chasm, about half the length of the entire bunker, stretched across the mountains side. The biting stench of sulfur made his nose wrinkle, but as he drew nearer and saw the air contorting with heat and steam, he found himself only becoming comfortably warm. He even drifted directly above it before awkwardly landing on the flattest bit of rock he could find.

His healing ankle, which he had been able to ignore up until this point, gave out the moment his bare feet met the rock. Kai barely caught himself in time, scraping his hands hard enough to bleed on the craggy, black volcanic rock, then onto his face as a gash in his shoulder made its presence known. A hole tore through his pants.

"Lovely," he muttered, and looked back to the bunker. Coming to the vent had another perk he hadn't considered. The puffs of gases and steam momentarily hid him from enemy fire.

Despite the pounding in his ears and urgency, Kai found himself starting dumbly back at the bunker.

 _Now what?_

He looked back down at the vent. He leaned over the edge with his good arm to try and see how far it went, or whether he could see any lava, but all he saw was black before the force of the rising heat caught his hair and tugged up on his wings. Heat, hotter than he had yet to experience it, seared past his skin—and for a brief, terrifying moment, he thought he had finally gone too far and burnt himself. He could even feel the skin of his eyelids smarting.

But then, as though simply adjusting to a hot bath, the smarting vanished and his muscles started to relax. The pain from his bleeding shoulder had lessened. He even found himself dipping down towards it, eyes drooping. Good lord, when was the last time he had had a proper hot bath or a soak in the springs? Had he ever been properly warm?

Rock crumbled beneath his hands. Too late he realized he had leaned too far to pull himself back, and he was tipping, scrambling, wings floundering to catch the air and pull himself up. But rather then being lifted by the hot, rising air, he tumbled, unable to coordinate his wings so they just caught, one after the other, sending him into a falling spiral.

Heat seared past him, growing. Molten metal seemed to cave in on him, squashing the air from his lungs, burnings his sense out with the overwhelming sting of sulfur.

Then his head hit against an outcrop of rock and all went black.


	7. Rebirth

**Another warm thank you to all my guest reviewers. ^.^ You're reviews are always a very pleasant surprise.**

5

Whatever he came to couldn't be called proper consciousness. What had once been the private little world of his thoughts and feelings had grown and crowded with unusable space that didn't think back or add to his collective consciousness, though it flooded him with stimuli he'd never experienced. Sensations of pressure, resistance, release, relief, cooling, heating, melting, falling, prickling, rising—

He searched for himself amongst all that, aware of his consciousness, but unable to find his body and its normal senses. Sight, smell, hearing, and taste had given way to overwhelming feeling, as though he had become impossibly large and bloated.

Then a concentration of what could only be vibrations distracted him. Where the vibrations moved, a sudden release of pressure occurred, but it tickled and cooled. He probed about it, feeling, searching, and finding something like taste returning to him. Metal? Unyielding metal.

The longer he focused on this new area of him, the more precisely he felt. The initial vibration that had brought him here was the largest, but it wasn't the only one. Countless tiny vibrations, all differing, scuttled about it like hermit crabs on the sea shore. Memory floating through him spread out his awareness, finding those little hums and buzzes spreading out from the main one all the way to the boundaries of his ability to feel, and to an immense coolness that waited for him, but never reached his depths.

 _Where am I?_ He had boundaries, yes, but where were his fingers? His feet, his mouth, his face—where was _him?_ And if these boundaries were sleepy places of relieved pressure, if he went inward, closer, would he find himself?

For but a moment, or at least his best comprehension of a moment, he turned inward going closer and closer towards the pressure till he could sense no further, as though the pressure had grown so great it created a wall. He felt it out anyways, trying to find an up, a down, anything.

Then, as though pulled by an unrelenting magnet, he found himself brought back to the little vibrations running along that tiny patch of his skin, or whatever had come to make his new skin. There were pounds, and even as he followed the path of a few, one of the vibrations stopped. Then another. They had stopped going towards the cool sleepy place. So many heading in one direction.

Where…what?

He didn't know. His awareness had become so small, and all this bulky weight was wearing him down, pressing him against the unmovable pressure like a heavy blanket.

One of the vibrations he had his attention glued to did something strange. It had stopped amidst a crowd of others and was changing. Even as he felt it grow stronger, changing in frequency, he noticed none of the other vibrations, however insistent, didn't change. They may vary a bit in movement or direction, but not…not like…

It changed, going up, and down, around, trilling, speeding, reaching deep, deep, like a change of light, like sounds, like…

A song.

His awareness snapped back to him. He found himself again—him, Kai—his own consciousness and identity squashed amongst all the pressure. He couldn't find the senses back to his body yet, as he felt more than knew, that whatever it was under couldn't be comprehended. He could feel his heartbeat, though, struggling to throb in the shrinking space, wanting to sleep, even as his mind raced within his skull. He could just feel that his body was _there._

He tried to shrink back from the mass, shrink back to just being him, but it was like pushing himself against that unseeable pressure at his core. There was just too much pushing down down down—but the more he focused on his body and regaining it, the more his consciousness bled out to him: the song had to be Ayah. Ayah was the only thing on this whole island that could control vibrations like that or even have a purpose to.

Memories dripped down like water from cupped hands. Danger. He went to the vent, towards the only hint he had. He'd leaned over the edge. Fallen down into the heat.

That meant he had to get back up and out. He had to get to Ayah. The others would be with her, and those men had guns—those men had death waiting in their hands, just because they were different, but more importantly, because they could be used as weapons.

That one thought cracked the last constricted bubble of his consciousness, and it all bled out into the mass, not enough to drench it, but enough for him to gain a sensation of control. He shoved up, with what arms he barely knew, though he hoped against hope that they were his. He moved, he fought all of his awareness up, using Ayah's vibrations to orient himself. The wall he found his consciousness pressed against was by far not the easiest path of resistance, which the rest of his unthinking bulk balked at. But he clawed it about him like a child pulls a heavy bag about his shoulders and lifted, shoved, beat, without even knowing what he was using to do such things, only struggling to make it so.

With one furious, weight defying roar that echoed from the pinpoint core of his tiny consciousness, the wall above him suddenly cracked, and his world spurted out, super pushed by the core pressure suddenly shooting out for the opening, for the release, for the escape.

A mind bending suction occurred. His massive bulk fell away at once and everything whirled. No pressure, no pressure, so _light._ Too light. He was going to bleed out, he was going to fall apart in every direction, he was going to inflate like a balloon until he popped.

But even as he rose, shooting up without gravity into what he thought could only be the cold, airless space, he found himself slowing. The air here was cold, and he shivered.

The shiver was what he had needed to find his body again, and with it, his eyes.

He didn't open them right away, too frightened to. Instead he waited till the falling up stopped and he found himself bobbing, drifting, with his frightened wings held out by what he realized a split-second later was a heavy updraft of air. He took account of his fingers, his toes, and the tickling of his tail feathers bouncing along the currents along with new feathers all up his back and around his hips and groin. Wait, no, they couldn't be new. He must have not taken account of those feathers.

Then sound return with a cataclysmic roar and he could no longer keep his eyes closed.

And found himself higher than he had ever been. The island had shrunk beneath him, the bunker invisible, the sea's waves vanished to a cold, metal plain. Trembling from far more than cold, he looked down—and into the maw of a rupturing volcano. Lava spewed towards him, never reaching close enough to quite touch him. Unlike the cartoons, it wasn't red or riveted with yellow lines like the reflections of water on the ocean floor. It was just bright, bright gold, as though a sun lived in the center of the earth and it was peering out of that crater.

And then he saw himself. Once more he was naked, but his body had changed. There were new feathers around his hips and groin that stopped short of his naval and continued farther up his back until they met his wings. His skin had also changed, from the almost snow-white pale to a golden type of tan. The gash on his shoulder had vanished to be replaced by a silver-white scar, and his other various aches, including his ankle, had vanished. The gray tips and highlights on his feathers had given way to gold just as brilliant as the lava bellow. Even the scarlet shimmered with gold.

The greatest relief for him, however, was that his hard fought for muscle build had returned better than ever before. He certainly wasn't Ray the Thunder Hulk, as he still had his own frame.

But it was so nice.

 _Did I…?_ He looked down at the erupting volcano, the rising updrafts of which held him airborn without any effort on his part. In the time it had taken for him to come back to his senses, his body had gradually adjusted to the cold and a normal (as he could only guess) sense of temperature returned to him.

Along with why he had fought out in the first place.

With that thought, he all but swam out of the lake of rising hot air and fell down in a steep dive. As he drew closer to the raging crater and the falling streams of percolating gold down its sides, he became aware of a thin, tendril connection to the weight, thoughtless, unaware consciousness he had once been a part of. Instinctually, he seized onto it, holding it tight until he came close to the black-brown sides of the mountain. Then he pulled.

Lava splurted sluggishly towards him from the nearest stream, and the mountain gave another great shudder, releasing yet more waves of molten rock.

He banked hard, too hard, and found himself much stronger than he had expected. Flight had become as easy as thinking, and he barely caught himself from smashing into the volcano's side.

"Focus," he growled to himself, then looked out at the bit of the control tower he could see. Pulling the lava in about him, tugging at the sense of release and quick cooling, he drank in the heat and closed his eyes. First, he had to find Ayah again.


	8. The Golden Phoenix

**Now, to continue the apocalyptic awesomeness which Kai has essentially become...**

6

On the outside it was much harder. His small consciousness couldn't comprehend the vast lake of what he assumed was heat or lava beneath the island, so he had to guess, knowing it had to be somewhere near the shore. Lucky guess, or some sort of intrinsic sensation memory, he found her almost immediately. She had stopped just short of the shores, and even as he narrowed in on her, he could catch just on the edge of his mortal hearing the faintest of sounds.

Opening his eyes, he flicked off the cooling trails of lava from his wrists and reached for a new stream as he turned back to the base.

He had to trust the others were with her, and there was only one way he could think off pulling of her pursuers without getting shot himself. She was by the shore, but out of the building was all he asked.

With the sensation of a needle shooting through a lake, he pushed out his consciousness across the underground pressure towards the big, cooling vibration he could now see was under the army base and shoved, just as he had to escape. Resistance met him at first, but then something broke and relief flooded into the presence. The big vibration had stopped.

For a moment, nothing happened. Alarms screamed, the ruptured spot met the cold air, then heated once again with his continuing effort.

And then the earth trembled beneath his feet and great plumes of smoke billowed out from around the base. Within moments he could taste the acrid flames fed on artificial building materials and molten metal.

That taken care of, he raised his wings, which left veils of gold dust in their wake—but wait, not gold dust. Sparks. Super heated sparks.

Heat caught to his wings and pushed his feet off the ground before he made his first flap. Then he shot up, golden sparks cluttering in his wake like clouds of glitter. Within a breath he was as high as he desired and soaring out towards where he had felt Ayah's presence. As he spotted movement in the greenery below, he'd dip, brush those sparks against trees, and arc back up in the wake of newborn flames furiously eating away at the foliage. The air about him seemed to snag flames onto anything.

And then he saw them, Ayah and probably the only non-black clothed figures on the island, gathered in a cluster at the center of a black ring, on the border where the greenery met the edges of the craggy shores.

He dived, lips curled back, lava rising. As he fell, cold air met super heated, creating a high pitch whistling. Only feet above the heads of the soldiers he snapped his wings opened and crashed feet first into two men before landing on grass that instantly took flame at his presence. He breathed out at the others, engulfing half a dozen men and an unfortunate palm tree in white hot flame. They didn't even have the time to pull the trigger before they died.

Guns from the other side of the circle went off, and he heard the ricochet off of what sounded like stone. He whirled around, heart in his throat—

To find the others clenched close in the arms of Max, his plated back facing the surviving wall of the ring. Bullet's bounced off him in bright flashes.

Kai leapt high, a beat of wings, a soar of heat, and the next half of the ring had fallen way into charred shriveled corpses.

Then Kai backed away quickly. Barely any of the grass around the others had been left green, and he could see red growing on Max's exposed arms. He was too hot. He couldn't go to them now without risking their lives.

"There's a harbor," he pointed down the beach when Max's and Tyson's heads jerked up. "They have boats tied up there. Find one."

"Kai," Tyson croaked. "Is that…is that really you?"

In the center of their arms he spied a familiar white head, half-hidden beneath Ray's bare, striped shoulder. His Chinese tunic had vanished somewhere, and he could see faint burns on his friend's back. He pushed aside the crunch of guilt. Later.

"That way," he said again, pointing. "Stay close to the water. I'll take care of the warships."

And fearing, even as he stood there, that the perpetual gold dust about him might ignite the very air they breathed, he pushed off into the sky and towards the metal monstrosities half hidden in their rocky alcove. He alighted along the stones at the edge of the cliff side leaning over them with the thought of reaching through to the lava beneath the island. But he could no sooner feel that massive presence than he could feel a speck beneath the sand. Hardened stone, after all, wasn't fire.

Thus, gathering his fury, reminding himself that they wouldn't escape the island if the warships were allowed to persue them, Kai dove off the edge, swallowing hard as he did so. He did the familiar push of heat against his skin. Light blossomed about him as he took flame, and the golden dust about him turned to a full blown swarm of fire blossoms.

He aimed for the guns and cannons first. He had the idea to melt the tips, to at least make them harmless first, but he had once more underestimated his new strength. The fire he pushed towards them erupted, pushing him back by the force of the explosion and leaving a smoking, firy nub where the gun had been. Encouraged and stunned, he took aim at the other gunnery and let loose.

Before he had a chance to reach any of the turrets, explosions echoed down the tower of the ship, and the great metal monstrosity gave a shriek. Its prow rose up, and it's rear dropped into the flame brushed waters.

As Kai took care of the second, he caught sight of another boat dwarfed in the shadow of the battle shipd. It looked like the equivalent of a coast guard's tug boat. He almost flew down to get a better look, than thought better of it and moved on to the other smaller vessels. Only the boat they would be getting into should remain.

Smoke parted before him as he broke through the black-gray column and back over the beach, his eyes instantly falling on the black shapes lining the cliff's edge. Still aflame, he only had to brush near for every green or moving thing to catch fire. Rocks even started to glow the nearer he was to them.

 _How do you turn this off?_ He tried to will the fire back within himself, and it did give way, but the mist of sparks around him didn't. He could still sense more than feel the burning aura he gave off.

Then he saw the other's not too far out, running along the beach, and pulled up short.

He couldn't get near, not after seeing what he could do to other people even a little close to him. How'd he be able to escape with them? Would he have to fly above their boat till America? Would he eventually cool off?

"It's this way!" he cried down to them, daring to get a little lower until he could see their faces. He started a series of looping circles towards the column of smoke. Occasionally he'd hear the burst of gunfire or spy a flash of black and would swoop up to brush the edge of his personal spark bubble against them, or just puff out a column of fire. But, then, even after he was certain a hail of bullets had come near him as he charged down a man point blank, nothing hit him. It wasn't till he nigh crashed into the man that he noticed the gun melting by his near presence and understood.

Hot enough to melt bullets.

With that in mind, he focused on keeping lower to his friends. If he were lucky, he could use his new bullet melting heat to stop any stray bits of lead he couldn't catch in time.

As they entered into the tall, open cove, he heard his team start to hack and cough. They slowed and hunkered low to the ground, arms before their faces. Biting his lip, Kai looked about for a ledge or something to hold onto. His newly acquired strength helped him to pull up on the first one he found and cling to whatever handholds he could find behind him as he beat his wings. Instantly, as though a great gust had moved from the rock face, the smoke blew out over the water. His team wearily picked up speed.

"After the second ship!" he hollered out as loud as he could. He had done everything he could to make sure none of the fire would go near that one ship. As soon as the others were close to it, he stopped flapping and let go of the wall. The golden sparks about him had thinned, or perhaps that was just his hope.

"Here!" he yelled, swooping in on the ship as close as he dared and hovered. It amazed him that an action that had threatened to eat up his strength and energy in mere seconds now was no trouble.

As they ran up the planks and onto the ship, Kai got his first chance to see the true size of it compared to them. It had seemed much smaller before. Nevertheless, he had to resist the urge to swing down and push the ship from port himself when it didn't get moving right away.

A deluge of noise and force slammed into him. He saw blue sky swallowing the column of black smoke. And fire. Fire he didn't know, peeling off by the wind his wings couldn't catch.

A splash. Cold as he had never imagined it—cold beyond pain, beyond grasp—

And nothing.


	9. Warm Stitches

7

Cold. So cold. But even then, something told him it was bearable, however uncomfortable, compared to how it had been. Water like sand pushed out of his mouth by a force that wasn't his own, warmed by his inner fire.

He curled onto his side, away from the bruising force, and coughed for all he was worth. As the last flecks of water became steam, he tried to bring his face down to the rest of him to spread the warmth.

"Tyson, where are those towels!"

"I'll get a blanket." A higher voice. Ayah. And the pattering of feet.

"Sure it won't catch fire?"

"Am I catching fire? He isn't even burning me, he's freezing."

"No need to snap, Ray. It's a perfectly good question. He was like a flying sun—or lava bird."

The force—now recognizable as someone's curled fist—thumped his back between his wings, the top of which he had pulled in close to conserve heat, just to find his feathers dripping with more icy water. He threw back the wing in alarm.

And knocked someone flat.

"Ack—Oy! I'm trying to help, Kai."

Despite the fact that his head still spun for want of air, he could now comprehend that it had been Ray beating on him—heaven forbid if he'd given him mouth to mouth—not it wasn't, Kai was a man, he could handle another man giving him CPR. Maturity.

That line of thought told him in and of itself that he was going to live. His esophagus burned in a painful way, not the burn he knew as heat, and still that horrid cold. Ugh, freaking…freaking…it wasn't cold. No, no this was pain. Raw, unadulterated, body wide pain.

Even as his still rebooting brain tried to separate the pain into individual sources, he managed to wheeze, "What happened?"

"You got hit with a missile," said Max, almost reverently. "Or, rather, I think it exploded before it hit you, hit that, like, heat cloud of yours, but the explosion got you."

"And hit you right into the sea," said Ray blandly as he took up one of Kai's wings and started to gently, cautiously squeeze out the water from the feathers—to which Kai was grateful. "At least you didn't hit the ground, though I don't know if that would have hurt you any less."

Huh, a missile. That was a first. Oh, and a report had come back from his brain's research. He was still naked. Of course, he just had to be naked. He'd come out of the volcano like that, he'd land into the ocean like that. At least he had that weird girdle of feathers to give him some decency.

"I fished you out," said Max. "Don't worry, you weren't in too long. You doing alright, though? Fire elemental-dude-thingy speaking?"

"I'm cold. Really, really cold." His teeth had started to chatter, as though to emphasize his point.

"Yeah, don't worry, we're working on that. Where the hell is Tyson?"

A pattering on metal from above, then a heavy whoosh of air that made Kai cringe. Wet+cold+wind=no.

"I brought the blanket," said a breathless Ayah.

A new concern had popped up in Kai's mind and he forced his face away from the rest of him to get a good look at his surroundings. The first thing he saw was ocean, then a haze of black clouds. The water seemed to be moving past them, though, that's what was most important. But they weren't free yet.

Just as he had managed to make his cold-stiff arms push him up, a thick, cotton blanket was thrown over him, blocking his vision.

"Max, you better get up to the control room. We need to get moving," said Ray.

Kai tore the blanket off his head. "You haven't left port yet?!"

"Calm down," said Ray, tossing the edge of the blanket back over his shoulders. "You've done enough. Let us take it from here. Ayah, we're going to need some bandages too."

Ayah nodded, but had no sooner stepped back to launch up into the air when a loud, "Speak no more!" came from above, followed by a falling meteor of claws and dragon crashed into the metal side-deck, sending vibrations through Kai's bones.

"Towels!" Tyson cried, tossing a stack onto Kai's belligerent head. "And first-aid! Applaud my forethought, Ray! You didn't even think of that"

Kai shook his head free of the fluffy offense and tried to free himself from the blanket once more.

"Did you just fly?" Ayah asked.

Tyson smiled. "Yep."

"You jumped from the third floor."

"Oh tiger of little faith."

Ray rolled his eyes as he popped open the first-aid. Ayah stopped him from reaching for the gauze.

"Maybe I should do that," she said, gesturing towards his hands with her chin.

Ray looked down at his sharp, cruel claws, and sighed. "Where do you want him?"

"I can carry myself," said Kai, whose hoarse voice sort of ruined the convincing part, but he all but threw himself to his feet—except something gave out between ground and there and he ended up making an arc. Before his face could make contact, Ray's arm appeared, not even a blur to announce it.

Kai's eyebrows rose. "Fast."

Ray chuckled. "You think I'm impressive, you should look at a mirror the next time you get the chance."

Tyson let out caw. "But it's nothing compared to how you were! The air turned all gold around you and wherever you went…" he paused as Kay struggled back to sitting, hissing with pain. "Where did you come from? I mean, one minute we're busting through dudes, the next this huge earthquake," his eyes went big. "Dude, did you come out of a _volcano_?"

"Yep," he said through clenched teeth. It was his knee. A gash, that also looked like it would bring a good dark bruise with it, had torn up the side of his leg. At least no tendons had been cut. Hurt worse than it looked. Guess some shrapnel made it past his heat bubble.

Tyson's jaw struggled to work from its place on the floor. "Like, in in the volcano? Like in the lava? Were you just lucky that it erupted or was there lava all burbling at the top anyways?"

Kai thought for a moment, even as he found the whole right side of his body had gone red, even through his new gold tanned skin. "I made it erupt."

Ayah slipped as she crouched down onto her rear, nearly upsetting the first-aid box. White feathers brushed past his injured leg, but he didn't mind. He tried not to stare too much—or worse, smile—as three sets of eyes gawked at him.

"How'd you get into a volcano?" asked Tyson. "Wait, the lava was all burbly at the top anyways, wasn't it?"

"I fell into a vent."

"Fell?" Ray raised an eyebrow. "As in it was an accident?"

"More or less."

Ayah wasn't staring at him anymore. She had brought over one of the towels, which she busied herself moping up blood seeping from the gash, saying nothing. He watched her hand, which looked particularly white and slender against his muscled thigh.

From within the boat came a steady rumble, followed by Max shouting out from somewhere above and behind Kai, near the front of the ship.

"Ray! I need you!"

"Guess that's my cue. Try to get him to a room, Tyson."

"Aye aye, Tigger!"

Ray's eye twitched. But then he was gone.

Kai sucked in a breath through his nose as Ayah pressed disinfectant around the wound. Tyson hunkered down on his scaly, draconic legs, long heavy tail sliding back and forth across the side deck, a dog wagging its tail. Its knobbed end poked out through the railings and over sea on each swing. For the first time Kai got a good look at what the bunker had done to his friend, but it didn't look like much. There were shadows beneath his eyes and he wore a white gown and short pants much like Ayah. Kai took comfort in the healthy flush to his face, though. At least Tyson was hopeful—or had been well fed.

A thick, rubber band snapped closed on his thigh above the gash.

"What was it like?" he asked.

"Being in a volcano? Like being bloated to a million times your size and then squashed between two continents—ahhk!"

"Sorry," said Ayah softly. "I don't think butterfly tape is going to do it, but they'll have to do until I can get you to a room."

Tyson gave Ayah a double-take. "You're going to sew him? Are you qualified?"

"I've had to stitch up my brother before," she said, and by her tone Kai could deduce that her thoughts were elsewhere.

Suddenly, the tugboat jerked back. Kai half jumped to his feet, wings half raised and inner fire spluttering to respond—

-just to be yanked back down by Ayah's oddly strong, firm grip. "Let them deal with it."

Kai frowned down at her hand, which took its sweet time loosening.

Tyson let out a slow whistle and pushed himself to his feet. "Welp. I better see what I can do."

"Aren't you going to help me with Kai?"

"Course, course," Tyson said a bit too quickly, sounding uncomfortable for some odd reason. His grip on Kai's good arm was sure, however, as he lifted the phoenix to his shoulder and pulled his arm around his neck.

"You're supposed to take the bad side," said Kai.

"Oh, right. Yeah."

With that correction, Tyson hefted the limping Kai up a flight of clanging stairs and into the first door they came to, which turned out to be a utilitarian cabin with a bunkbed on one side, and a full sized bed on the other. Everything had been done in white.

Tyson eased Kai down with surprising gentleness that Kai though unnecessary. His confusion increased as Tyson only met his eye for a moment before turning back to Ayah.

"Do you need me to hold him down?"

"If I can't find any numbing agent, yeah."

In his gut, Kai could feel the boat moving again. He closed his eyes, more to stop him from pushing aside both of them and launching back outside. The deep rooted shivering had yet to leave his body, and it aggravated the bruised right side.

Usually, he wouldn't be the one to take anyone's orders. But it was a lesson he had learned a long time ago about being a part of a team: you had to do the obeying sometimes, otherwise they would have no reason to listen to you when it mattered most. It was something he had taken for granted early on in the game.

Tyson made attempts at talking about Kai's transformation, from his now white hair and tail feathers now grown back, with a gusto Kai knew was false. There was too little space between his words, a something like a tremor in the hands that pushed the pillow beneath his head.

After five minutes of this, in which Ayah had left and come back with a can of spray from the room Tyson had found the first-aid, he said, "I'm so glad you've finally grown in some fire proof private protection, dude. I've seen more of you've naked than anyone in the world I bet! Wouldn't our old fangirls totally freak over that! Not that I'll say anything, though, I know you Russian's are shy." He wiggled his black eyebrows.

Kai ignored the bait and just looked at him. He caught Tyson's gaze and held it, locking it.

As he expected, Tyson faltered. His smile weakened, and finally, fell along with his eyes.

"That the right stuff?" he asked, focusing his attention on Ayah.

Kai told himself to not be bothered by this, saying Tyson would talk to him in private. But he didn't know Tyson to be particularly careful about what was said in private and what wasn't.

"It's just a topical spray," she said, the line between her eyebrows now a deep chasm, and her bottom lip red from sucking. "But it's the only thing we've got. I'm so sorry, Kai."

He 'hmmphed.' "It's better than what I had as a kid. We used snow."

Tyson let out another low whistle. "That's our Kai, hardcore to a tee."

Ayah then directed Tyson to hold down on Kai's bare foot. Kai tried to feel as much as he could of Tyson's hands through the pain. The palm told a lot about one's emotional or mental state, and a tremor could tell a story. But he could barely feel the warmth.

The topical spray was a joke. Snow would have worked better. He was doing all he could not to flinch, but his leg, or rather his thigh muscles, seemed to have a mind of their own as Ayah brought in the hot needle. At least he succeeded in not emitting even a peep.

Then, after the first, awkward, stiff stitches, Ayah let out a puff of frustration and straddled his waist, her hands through the hem of his feather girdle and on either side of his thigh. He became very, very grateful to the pain, then. He doubted feathers, no matter how thick or long, would hide that particular response.

At least it went a long way in warming him up.

 **I think I'll update an extra chapter tomorrow so you guys can have a 'treat' for Halloween. ^.^ Why not? You guys deserve all the treats in the world! Except that would give you diabetus and then life would not be cool at all, because you'd be dead, and...yeah...**

 **...I'll just get to getting that extra post ready for tomorrow, eh?**


	10. Don't You Dare

**Happy Halloween! A second update as a Halloween gift. ^.^**

8

He was worn. The cold had been beaten off, helped along by his new strength, stitches done and bandaged, and the ship underway under Max's direction and a Ray holding an 'Ocean Navigation for Dummies' and an owner's manual of the ship. The tiger had always been more prone to pick up mental endeavor's after Hillary and Kenny. It probably had something to do with growing up in an isolated village where children learned to read for entertainment long before they had access to TV.

But even as the chilly, blustery evening fell down, and an afternoon of being wrapped up on a bed, chasing sleep, it never came. And as all sleepless people know, that is when the brain get's busy, and not usually in an upward direction.

Kai's companion was none other than the Marshal Scientist. He looked through the glass at him with his impassive, narrow eyed sneer, with a background of melted bodies behind him—and fire. Everywhere the air combusted and green turned black.

 _'There are plenty of other fire elemental bit beasts out there, none of which were conditioned and raised to be serial killers._ '

He'd see the dummies they were given in the Abbey, with red marker outlining where major arteries were. A little boy with a shock of rare, bright red hair stood in the doorway, mouth and face scrunched up with a scream no one would ever hear, and Kai hadn't known what to do, and the sympathy had hurt worse than the beatings ever could. Boris told them to keep walking when he saw a girl had curled up in the snow, like blankets. His first kill hadn't been human at all, but a brown rabbit he'd been given to raise, same as the others. His first mission had been for his grandfather. They told him the man wanted to kill his grandfather. Kai thought he was protecting him, even though he feared that he had simply stopped caring.

Because he couldn't care anymore, otherwise he'd always see the tiny Tala in his doorway with that silent, open mouthed scream.

And breaking in through the movie roll or memories, like badly timed ads, were the images of today, when he had become exactly what the Marshal said he was…and that dark voice in the back of his head that sang sweet songs of naps in the snow.

Finally, he couldn't bear it anymore. He hadn't felt it all while he'd been in the air, above it all. Not now.

It didn't help that that the first thing he saw on opening the door was ocean. Cold, black ocean. He wouldn't even have to wait for the cold to pass so the fatigue would come on. He didn't have to wait to fall asleep. In that regards, becoming fire made it all that much easier.

He limped to the railing and hung his hands over it. Sea spray tickled his palms and fingertips. It didn't feel like pain. It felt nice.

"Aren't you supposed to be asleep?"

The darkness pulled back, hissing at his new companion, who came towards him with the click-clack of nails and tail.

"Couldn't," Kai gruffed.

"That sucks. You looked like you needed it. Still do."

Tyson came up next to him and leaned his elbows on the railing much like Kai was, dangling his hands toward the sea below.

"Watching Max and Ray isn't nearly as funny as it was the first twenty minutes. They were like screaming chickens then, it was great. But now they're all quiet and focused, and Ayah's still gone exploring the ship. Think she might have holed up somewhere."

A twinge of concern broke through Kai's heavy thoughts. Ayah's welfare was more important than his, after all. At least to him. "Is she okay?"

Tyson shrugged and sniffed. "I don't know if you've noticed, but we've gone through a helluva lot of stink. I'm not even sure I'm okay. I mean," he leaned forward so his chin was in the crook of his arm. "I just saw my best friend being hit by a missile by people who were supposed to be our allies. Heck, by just freaking people. Human beings, with the same humanity as me. The poking and the prodding and the aggravation I could have handled with some time to beat the crap out of them, but seeing that…"

As Tyson always brought to his darkest moments, when Kai wanted it the least, his heart moved. He couldn't say anything to that, especially when he was still looking down at the water with little reason to keep himself out.

A quiet spread out between them, undemanding as it had finally become after years of knowing each other. Yes, Tyson was loud and obnoxious and talkative, but one had to truly be close for him to finally allow someone else into his rare moments of contemplation.

Remembering that shook Kai more.

"Is that why you were acting all weird back when you were helping Ayah with me?" he heard his voice saying, without remembering telling it to.

"I guess…" he said, rubbing the bottom of his nose with a finger. "And I just…with all your colors switched up and those huge wings and all, I just kept thinking 'what have we gotten ourselves into?' And seeing that missile coming at you…"

"Finally seeing that I was right?"

"Shut up." But there was little vehemence in his voice. He just sounded tired, much like Kai felt.

Kai looked back into the water. He saw the fire. He saw the marker on the dummies. He saw tiny Tala.

He saw relief. What did it matter if Tyson saw him as his best friend? Tyson was stronger than Kai had ever been, as he proved time and time again. He was good at bouncing back, and good at making friends. He had been the kid everyone in the neighborhood was friends with and counted on, and he had had thousands more do so with every year.

Kai? What was Kai? What had he ever been but a murderer.

He didn't realize he had put his foot on the bottom railing until Tyson's cool hand gripped his arm. His dark eyes had gone hard and serious.

"I don't like the look in your eye," and it sounded like a threat.

Kai just looked at him, feeling an old anger curling up from the past, when Tyson had stood in front of him and yelled that Kai was wrong—when Tyson had preached to him with a blade in his hand, and Kai could only see a naïve, lazy, sheltered little boy who'd never seen violence in his life.

He tugged his arm from Tyson's grip, regretting it a second later as Tyson's nails left thin, bleeding scratches on his bicep.

The blood startled the dragon from his warpath. "Oh my gosh, Kai, I'm so sorry, I'm…" he stared at his hand.

Then Kai caught the darkening, crinkling spark of self-loathing in Tyson's eyes. Nothing had ever looked so misplaced on Tyson's face.

But in that moment, all of the conceit and jealousy bled away like the memory it was.

"It's just a scratch," he said, putting a hand over his bicep.

Tyson snorted. "It's just a scratch now. What if I get huge claws like Dragoon? Or when the spikes on my tail grow out? What happens when I actually get flying and controlling the wind, what if I mishandle it and start a typhoon again? What if I hurt everyone I care about just as easy and carelessly as I just hurt you?"

Kai stepped back from him. He didn't have the room to help Tyson out, not when he couldn't answer it for himself.

But Tyson's next words stopped him.

"I wish I could be more like you."

The surprise got a dark, short laugh out of Kai.

"Like me?" he burst out, unable to contain himself. "A killer? Did you know, back there in that bunker, they stuffed me in the same room as Ray and lightning half-hoping I'd be shocked to death? When Ray asked how he could decide that, the guy said they could find other fire elementals who weren't raised to be serial killers. You should have seen the look on his face as he said that, then you wouldn't say something so stupid."

Tyson's face had gone pale as the sea foam cresting the waves. "He…he really said that?"

"And he was right," Kai all but growled. "I fall into a volcano, and instead of dying, I come out and destroy who knows how many hundreds of people—on purpose. And it was easy. It was so god damn easy."

"You were trying to protect us," said Tyson, getting louder.

"Does it matter? I was always trying to protect someone—but it's still killing. And just so you know, I didn't miss the burns on Ray's and Max's arms. You're probably hiding burns from me as well."

"No, I'm not!" Tyson was definitely mad now. "Max has a bit of a sunburn, but that's all, you didn't know! Freak, you're freaking fire! There were so many times you could have burnt us to a crisp just by breathing wrong, but you didn't! That's what I'm talking about—"

"Oh, so you can forget the murderous tendencies, or the fact that I was raised by a dickhead because fire hurts more than a nice breeze?"

"Shut up! You're not like that! I can't believe the big 'I'm awesomer than everyone' Kai is listening to what a stranger thinks of him more than someone who actually knows him, like, hey, ME!"

"It's you who doesn't know anything! You have no idea what it's like to be me!"

He didn't know when he had started screaming. But the desire to launch out at Tyson, to make him really feel just how dangerous Kai was, tore at him. He didn't deserve to be even near someone like Tyson. The fact that he should feel anything like this was proof. Murderers always justified themselves, didn't they? If he stuck around, who knew when his next panic attack might make him into another fire bomb? Who knew what kind of lies Tyson would come to believe?

Kai turn and tried to run. He needed the ocean. He had to get away from Tyson, far away, where he wouldn't see where he had gone in the waves. He couldn't let Tyson see—let Tyson stop him.

Yet, even if Kai would have been originally faster than Tyson, his injured leg threatened to give out and he felt his stitches tear.

So he did the only thing he could do to get away from him. He spread his wings and pounded over the railing with one pump. Wind whistled past him as he climbed higher, drinking in the power and burn of his muscles as he put them to the test. His body didn't even have time to protect him in a blanket of sweated heat, he could feel the cold slap of air like any mortal. Water vapor wetted his skin as he burst through a low hanging layer of clouds.

Gray edged the horizon where the sun had once been. He could see stars, as clear as those summer nights in the backwoods of Siberia, where the nearest civilization was five hours away.

He came aloft, breathing hard, arching back to drink it in. Oh, if only there weren't a him. Just a sky and stars to fill him whole, and clouds hiding the world.

He didn't bother straightening out as his head went back, over, down, down—gravity taking hold like a heavy quilt after a long day. The frigid sky tasted good, like glacier water.

Then something hard and big came up, catching fistfuls of feathers as it did. Kai let out a shout of pain and fury.

But it wasn't himself that he heard.

" _Like hell I'm gonna let you!"_

Tyson clung onto his wing, heavy tail waving like a banner behind him as though it weighed nothing, his black hair about him like a lion's mane. The white of his bared teeth shone in the dying light, and his eyes were bright.

Kai slammed his free wing up into him. Tyson's grip on the smooth feathers slipped—but then he was beneath him, football tackling Kai back up into the air.

"Now you LISTEN!" And it was the wind screaming his words back at Kai. "You listen to what **_I_** say!"

Kai beat his wings to fly off, but the momentum of Tyson's upward rocketing snatched any air from beneath them.

"Anyone else in your shoes would have turned into just what you say, but because you didn't—because you threw everything they tortured you with back into their faces—because you fight every day to not be afraid of friendship or closeness so that you don't hurt those around you—"

Kai had managed to wedge a leg in and kicked off from Tyson. He shot free and twisted, just to find himself breathless—and high. So very, very high. The clouds were so far down.

Tyson caught him again, this time by the end of his very long tail feathers. Pain shot up his spine and he choked on his lessening breath.

"—so that you can be _a good kid_ —so you can protect us, both from yourself and from others—"

Tyson let go, hopefully because he could see how much it hurt Kai and not because silky tail feathers were hard to hold onto. Kai let himself drop, eyes squeezed shut, wind roaring in his ears.

Something hard, plated, and long twisted around his chest and caught him, but only slowed the fall, not stop it all together.

"—because you risked your life for others, when no one had ever risked their life for you," it was Tyson's normal voice now, floating up and away the moment it reached Kai's hearing and thick with emotion. "Because you use all that they taught you to protect instead of kill, to control yourself and your fire…you're the strongest…best man I've ever known."

As Tyson's voice cracked and gave out, Kai looked up to see tears falling up from Tyson's eyes. They vanished at the same time they glimmered with reflected starlight.

"Don't you dare," he said, hoarsely. "Don't. You. Dare."


	11. Consequences of Fire

**To ZH and Kat x: I am so happy you enjoyed your chapters. And yes, Tyson is the best friend who brings the damaged, pecarious Kai back down to Earth. I don't know about you, but I love bromances. Friendships aren't talked about nearly enough today. It's all gay this and gay that and creepy loves that, but friendships are just as important.**

 **And to the guest reviewer WheresWilson: It's good to finally hear from you! I am glad you've come along for the ride. There's no many of us old Beyblade fans to be had, but besides that, I just get so much pleasure hearing someone is taking the time to read one of my stories. I hope I get to hear more of your thoughts in the future, for better or for worse. :)**

 **And to all the other unnamed guest reviewers who I can't thank in personal messenger here on fanfiction: thank you so much! Please continue to tell me what you think, and if there is anything I can do for you, please let me know. It's the least I can do for your time to leave your thoughts.**

9

Tyson didn't let him sleep alone that night. He hauled Kai's more or less compliant, but greatly pained and limping form up to the control room, where he demanded a very confused Max and Ray to not let Kai out of their sight. Then he vanished, just to return with a twin mattress underneath each arm, probably pulled from the same bunk beds of before. He set them in the corner, then ran off to get two more. By the time he was done, a large square nest of mattress and blankets took up the far back corner next to a wall of lockers. He then hauled Kai back up from the ground once more, not even bothering to ask, and threw the exhausted phoenix onto the mass.

"We're all sleeping here tonight," he told the other two. "All around Kai, like a wall. We gotta push him up against the lockers so he can't escape."

"Um, did something happen?" asked Max.

"Oh, nothing much, idiot just tried to kill himself." And ignoring their stunned, dead fish impressions, he asked, "Where's Ayah? She needs to be up here too, this is a team effort."

In any normal circumstance, Kai would have died of embarrassment and probably taken Tyson down with him. But he couldn't find it in him to care. He just didn't care. There was nothing left.

When Ray and Max murmured his name, prodding for some sort of response, he just rolled into the corner Tyson had designated for him and folded himself into the tightest, most covering wing cocoon he could manage. Maybe, if he pretended he was floating in nothingness, the humiliation wouldn't reach him. Oh…so maybe he did still care after all.

Oh, but it got worse. Ayah came in after Tyson and Ray went out searching for her with puffy, red eyes and hiccupping. Kai wouldn't have even seen her if he hadn't been peeking out to see if Max had gone too and the coast was clear to find some privacy. At least he managed to shut the tiny opening he had been peeking out of before she could notice him looking. Max was all concern, asking what was wrong, but Ayah said nothing. She did, however, crawl across the mattresses and curl up at the top of Kai's cocoon. Her feathers felt cool pressed against his. He could even smell her rosy, cinnamon bun scent.

And then Kai realized that she had probably heard the whole thing. No. She had. Tyson and Ray even came back announcing they hadn't seen her, edge of full panic mode, before realizing there was a new white mound on the mattress. She only responded to them when the others were working out sentry duty, Kai not included. That's okay. He hadn't asked. Never mind the fact that he probably was the best person for the job, since he couldn't comprehend sleeping a wink that night. Not with all that had happened and freaking bodies around him.

But, surprisingly, no sooner had Ray and Max flopped down around him then he was being jarred from a dream he could not recall by a familiar light, shining about him like sunlight through closed eyelids. Red feathers draped about a white-gold figure like a scarlet cape. Bright, gray eyes looked into him atop thin, pink lips.

" _There's a reason why we chose to inhabit children's tops rather than the weapons like we did in ages past,"_ she said. " _Our children are the future, our only future, and we could no longer protect them through tools of war."_

The woman, with a mane of white-gold hair about her like a halo, suddenly seemed to soften. She had stood with imperiousness before, with a fierce strength that had been all but palpable to him, but now took it off like one does a well-worn coat. She reached out, and for the first time Kai became aware of his own body, both floating and standing in the strange half darkness, half lightness.

" _Find a safe place for your future. That's all you must worry about now. If you allow yourself to be distracted by the welfare of this world, which is out of your power and far from your responsibility, you will fail, and your family will die."_

Kai found himself pulling back from her warm touch with a snort. "What family? If you mean my friends, I get it."

She just lifted her glowing face, both amused and pitying. " _Have you forgotten already?"_

And suddenly he was holding something bundled tightly in soft blankets. Tiny infant hands curled about the fingers closest to it. Just as he thought he might drop it out of pure shock, other little hands took hold of his pant pockets, and more little faces looked up at him. One child even had his wide, grim mouth and mop of strange, early gray hair—a little girl, who looked up at him with unusual seriousness for one her age.

And then he was waking up to bright morning sunlight and feeling better rested than he had in a very, very long time. Ray was at the wheel, sitting back in a swoop back stool with thick, green leather cushions and staring out at the wall-length windshield at the morning ocean. A long, furry, white and black tiger's tail hung underneath one of the armrests, still except for the steady twitch at its end.

Despite Tyson's intentions to imprison Kai there, he found it surprisingly easy to uncurl his wings and step over said snorer—until his torn leg decided to remind him of the abuse he put it under the day before. He barely missed landing right on top of the Japanese boy and fell into a half roll, holding in a yell of pain, but getting out had to happen. Kai had to pee, and he still needed some pants. Feathers did nothing to cover your rear.

Thank god Ayah just had super hearing, not super sight. Then again…

As though reading his thoughts, Ray said, without turning around, "There's a bathroom in the back of the cab."

Kai managed to hobble over with his good foot and did his business, then went to the non-mattress-shrouded end of the lockers and started opening doors. Certainly there had to be pants somewhere, even if his thigh felt so swollen in never wanted to be stuffed into a tube of cloth again. Ray seemed to have found a shirt just fine.

"There's a utility closet," Ray said, still not looking back. "All the way at the end."

Some utility closet. It only looked big enough to fit a broom and mop, but, sure enough, there were a folded stack of adjustable BDU's and white shirts. Forgoing the shirt, he sat on his rear and managed to wiggled into a pair, wincing, not just at the pain, but as he ended up, once more, shoving it up beneath his tail. Next he'd need a knife. Whether it was to cut off his leg of a hole under his belt loops for his tail, he hadn't decided.

"Where are we going?" Kai asked, even though Ray didn't have a hand on the wheel. He just sat there, elbows on the flat bar of controls, chin in one clawed palm.

"Roughly California-ish." He tapped at a screen next to him. "Rig's got a GPS, so that's nice. Max set the course. I told him it wasn't a good idea, but we've got nowhere else to go, and this thing is fuel only."

Kai came up to his side to get a look at the thing, resisting the urge to commandeer another stool in the consideration that he'd have to get up from it anyways. All he could see was a tiny, white boat icon in a sea of green-lined black. Ray tapped a claw at the corner, zooming out of the view until a thick, yellow line came into view, along with a small box with the words, "California, USA," along with a little dot labeled "Los Angeles."

"It's pretty cool," Ray continued, having finally turned somewhat to face him. "If you want it will show all the nearby towns and ports, along with numbers to various coast guards and control towers."

"Turn north," Kai said with a frown.

"North?"

"Our destination is Alaska." Even as he said it, Kai used the touch screen to scroll up the coast, past Oregon and Washington. "You're right, Los Angeles is the last place we should go to right now. Anywhere in America is."

"Okay, but isn't Alaska a part of America?"

"Yes, but it's further away from the mainland. But we're not going there to find somewhere safe. We got to pick up someone."

Ray raised an eyebrow. "Since when? Did you contact someone?"

Kai zoomed in near the edge of Alaska, towards the Alutian Islands, and tapped till he could see a tiny dot next to a little spot outline in thinner lines.

"Tala. He said he'd meet me there."

"When?"

"Sooner rather than later." Kai tapped on the nearest port to the lake, then pulled down the menu which he found easily enough and saved the destination.

Ray let out an impressed "Huh. Didn't know it could do that."

"Most navigation devices have the same interface," said Kai. "Are you going to turn north or should I?"

"Weird you should ask. Shouldn't we wait for the others to wake up?"

"What for? You said they had no other ideas." Kai reached for the wheel and gave it a casual spin left. A creaking and clicking followed it, followed by the ship responding at an ungainly tilt. Ray braced himself on the control pad. "Besides, if anyone knows how to stay under radar, it's him."

"Slow down, you're going to tip us over."

"Calm down. A military grade boat this fat isn't going to tip because someone jerked the wheel. Besides, we're already level."

And so they were, and heading north to boot.

Ray whacked Kai's hand away from the wheel anyways, scowling.

"Okay, fine, but shouldn't we get closer to shore anyways? We can't be caught out here without fuel."

"Worry about that when we're actually near that." Kai tapped the fuel gage just right of the GPS. "Besides, if you're so worried," A few experimental taps and a slide latter, Kai had pulled up the exact distance in miles and time between them and the coast of California on the GPS's black screen. "You got the manual, right?"

Ray just dropped his elbow to the console and put his eyes to his spread forefinger and thumb. Kai decided he had pushed the tiger enough and limped towards the door. He'd have to investigate into getting a crutch or something, this was getting ridiculous

"Where do you think you're going?"

Kai stopped, instant guilt twinging up. "Breakfast."

"How do I know you'll come back?"

Kai gave him a droll look—and really, Ray deserved it. But, then, so did Kai. "Do you want anything? Or you could start speaking just a little more loudly and wake up your exhausted teammates."

"Don't give me that attitude," Ray swiveled round on his little green stool—which really, it was little, compared to the muscled bulk he'd become. "After the stunt you pulled—"

"Fine, I promise. Could you tell me what you want to eat and where the kitchen is already? I can tell you're starving."

Ray jerked up, almost with an audible choke. Kai didn't know why he had to act so surprised. He'd known the guy for three years and been his team captain two of them. If he couldn't at least tell when his teammate had a serious case of hangry, they were better off with a fish for a captain.

Kai fought down the smirk as a light, pink cloud dusted across Ray's nose. The guy had just transformed, after all. He may have had a freaking tazer to hold onto, but Kai wouldn't put it past him to have the munchies as bad as the rest of them.

"Eggs," he mumbled. "Fish if you can find it."

"I'll see what I can do. Directions?"

"Deck level. Very back of the ship."

And before Ray could find another reason to accost him, Kai was out and into the fresh, salty morning air.


	12. No Room for Mothers

10

He might as well not have even bothered. Ray caught up to him just as he had hunkered down in front of a tall, industrial cupboard next to the freezer. Kai barely spared him a glance.

"Leaving duty?" he pulled out a bag of flour and prayed the rows of white plastic bags weren't all flour. He hadn't a clue what to do with flour.

"I doubt the ship will have a freak out or some pirate sneak up on us while I'm watching you," he said, his cat like eyes slitted despite the darker kitchen. "Besides, you can hardly walk _and_ can't cook."

"I'm passable." Yep. All flour. Next cupboard. So much for trust. But, whatever.

"You couldn't even manage bacon."

Kai didn't point out that bacon was tricky, no matter who you were. You didn't even know how well you did until you took it out of its own fat. Anyone would have a time dealing with a meat that sneaky. But he just tossed the cupboard closed and found a counter to lean up against. He could feel that he had torn out at least one of the stitches over the night, and didn't want to think about it.

"Fine. But if Max comes down here freaking out that we're not going to LA—"

"Too late."

Max had just stepped through the doorway, chest heaving, probably from the effort it had taken to run the length of the ship. All that defensive weight couldn't be easy to transport without water's help.

Kai sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. It was like his life was a freaking movie. How many must-have-been rehearsed entrances did this make?

"What's up?" Max asked, tone clearly straining to stay cool.

Kai looked at Ray, and fought the urge to make himself scarce, not that he could even if he wanted to. He had some accounting to do, but that didn't mean he looked forward to facing Max's legendary Mama-love. This would be ugly.

At least Ray got the hint and went on to explain, though he only got to the point about Tala, before Max's restraint broke. "Oh, so your old Abbey friend is more important than my mom?"

"This isn't a rescue boat," Kai said, dryly.

"And Kai said he could help us find cover—" started Ray, if half-heartedly.

"So could my mom!"

"Yes, because she did so well at avoiding detection the first time around."

Max's face turn red than purple faster than a streetlight. "Like she'd know the freaking gov would be after us! I'm turning the ship around—"

Kai was expecting this. In two strides he was across the room and in the small space between Max and the door, probably popping five more stitches from the feel of it. But he had to do this quick and fast. In any drawn out match, Max was sure to win, though when he had started to think of this in terms of a beymatch he didn't know.

"Even if you knew where your mom was in LA, every blood-thirsty American fed will be after us, or did you forget that we just destroyed a military base?"

"You destroyed it—"

"Oh, yes, because they're going to make that distinction when they capture you and everyone else here to become their human weapons." At Max's shock, Kai let out a dark smirk. "I'm sorry, did you think we were going to be helping them build streets and houses for the poor? Or did you forget that there's nuclear war in the air?"

Max pushed at Kai, and the phoenix found himself hard pressed to hold his ground, as in not at all. Max's armored bulk was the antithesis of Kai's light boned, feathered body, despite his recently acquired muscle. Not to mention one of Kai's legs was more or less out of commission. He had to snatch on to the door handle for support.

"Out of the way," said Max quietly, though the ears sticking out from his messy blond hair were still purple with rage.

"No. You will not endanger your team."

"I'm not going to endanger anyone! I'll go by myself, I'll catch up with you later—"

"Use your brain, Max. If you go into enemy territory, Tyson will follow you, and so will Ray and Ayah—and then I'll have to come out of obligation to make sure none of you get killed."

"Well I'm so sorry that you have—"

Kai struck, clothes-lining his arm about Max's neck and throwing his weight behind it. He couldn't wait any longer. Max had already begun prying the doorknob from his grip, and he knew the moment Max got out, he'd be over the rail and in the water, far from Kai's reach.

Course, he suspected that Max's broader base and weight would make it difficult to throw him. But he had been trained as a kid to kill adults, so he did have a card or two up his sleeve, like jumping his good leg to the door and kicking off of it. What Kai had loss in weight compared to Max he made up for with strength and training.

The whole kitchen rattled when Max came down with a bang. The blond boy was so startled, he didn't even have the time to think about trying to move before Kai had straddled him and put a blazing hand to Max's face.

"Grow up, Maxie," he said low, staring hard into Max's belligerent gaze. "You go, you endanger all of us along with yourself. But you probably haven't even given a thought to anyone else's feelings besides yours. You don't care if you'll frighten and worry your teammates, you don't care how your mom will feel when she see's all her attempts to keep you safe go down the drain because you've stupidly charged into LA, you don't care about your father's feelings or that of whoever else doesn't want you dead or used as an American plaything to kill thousands. You just care about your mommy worries being satiated, nevermind everyone else here probably has family they're worried about too."

"Kai," Ray had stepped forward and had a hand on his shoulder, clamped hard.

He shrugged of Ray's hand, but allowed the fire on his hand to die out. A hard, painful jerk tried to uproot his innards when he saw angry blisters across Max's nose. Averting his gaze, he got off onto his good leg and pushed up. An angry heat had become his thigh. He didn't look forward to seeing the results of his action.

Even though he probably wouldn't be able to pull anyone up, he offered Max a hand.

"I'm sorry," and he meant it. "But I can't let you do something so stupid."

As he expected, Max slapped aside his offered hand. He had to roll onto his front before he could get himself to his feet, as the plates made his back hardly flexible. He didn't look at Kai as he went to back to the door, though he did stop with his hand on the handle.

"That's really funny, coming from you. Didn't think about anyone's feelings when you tried killing yourself last night, did you?"

Yep. He felt that. As if burning Max's face hadn't been enough, but he could think of no other way to overpower Max's sheer bulk than with a show of fire, even if he had been in peek form. If it ever came to it, Max could probably do him over in minutes.

The moment Max had vanished, he turned to the tiger. "Ray, go after him."

The look Ray gave him was incredulous. "Seriously? After the crap you just pulled?"

"That's _exactly_ why you should go. He's likely to do something stupid if I try to look after him. Ask him to catch you those fish you wanted, it should distract him, but make sure he understands that we'll send Ayah to find him if he doesn't come back."

For a moment, Ray just looked at him, not quite glaring, but not exactly happy either. Kai knew on a rational level Ray understood why he had done what he did with Max, but that didn't mean he liked it.

Finally, Ray closed his yellow eyes and sighed. When he looked back up at Kai, he said, "That really was rich coming from you."

Kai could feel something like fire, but more like acid, percolating up from his stomach as he watched Ray head towards the door. He found his mouth had gone dry.

If it stayed like this…

"Ray."

Ray paused in the doorway, glancing back.

But Kai kept his eyes to the chrome backdrop behind the kitchen sink. "I'm sorry."

Without a word, Ray left, leaving Kai back where he had started: trying to find something other than flour for breakfast.

 **-And that is the end of this book. Stay tuned next week for book 8, "Before Beasts, There Was Ice!" And please let me know what you think of the series so far. ^.^ No, it will not go on forever. The end is near. Yes, I will finish it. Pinky promise.**


End file.
